Malekko

Malekko Heavy Industry Corporation is an American company specializing in guitar pedals and modular synthesizers. The brand located in Portland, Oregon, produces such products as Ekko 616, B:assmaster, Diabolik, Omicron series, Wolftone series.

Josh Holley, a businessman and music industry veteran, and Paul Barker, a guitar player and an ex-member of Ministry, Revolting Cocks, Lard, Pailhead, The Blackouts, Lead Into Gold, PTP and Acid Horse bands. The personal world music tour experience as well as recording and production helped Barker to fill the aesthetics of his brand with his skills as well as knowledge in use old vintage and modern stage and studio equipment. He’s also famous as Hermes Pan – together with Ministry he recorded a few albums a.k.a. Hermes Pan when a member of Luxa/Pan Production.

All Malekko instruments carry a Paul and Josh’s Superlative “seal of approval”. Josh is an old and competent synth fan who is extremely interested in development of any idea concerning new audio devices designs.

The future developers used to play in one band during a year and decided to start a commercial project in 2006. B:assmaster appeared to be in great demand which incited the idea of business further development. Chaotically organized production, which had already existed for a year, finally found a location. Malekko owners claim that each time they’re into designing there are much more construction prototypes than instruments which conform their highest expectations – all the scrap left goes to waste. The amount of pedals which never made it to the market would have any guitar effect fan shudder. Anyway as a result many truly successful – some might say ones of the best – analog delay models Echo 600 and Echo 300.

Soon Josh and Paul began to think how to combine modular synthesizers, Eurorack format, their unique elaborated and ways of possible implementation. That’s how they came to B:assmaster module design.

Malekko started to cooperate with Grant Richter of Wiard Synthesizer. Together they designed Wiard 1200 series Eurorack modules.In 2016 Barker and Holley promise many new modules, pedals and amusing housing looks.

Now they have (the selection is big enough) such units as B:assmaster distortion pedal with pitch, overtone, harmonic and dry/wet signal control; Diabolik fuzz pedal developed together with Justin Meldal-Johnsen and featuring 3 knobs giving volume, dry/saturated signal control; Sneak Attack auto swell pedal which can be used in tremolo mode and the essence of which is in AD envelope with individual controls for two segments; Sloika MKII multiband pedal creating lucid distortion and not brushing the original sound of the instrument while featuring glide effect to achieve clear signal; or Scrutator based on DSP platform.

Among Malekko modules there are: Richter Oscillator II (/LFO) with fine/coarse tune and 4 separate outputs; Richter Anti-Oscillator which is unique owing to Mayhem output for an irregular waveform starting off as a square and turning into a few convoluted lively waveforms creating a peculiar sound from thick to metallic depending on modulation; or Richter Dual Borg comprising two different filters sounding and reacting to external instruments in a different manner. The concept was taken from Buchla 292 and Korg MS20.

Together with Roland Malekko recreated System-100m calling it System-50: Eurorack format, fully analog, fully compatible with modern synthesizers. It was produced in USA and assembled in Japan: 512 Dual VCO, 521 Dual VCF (each of the two filters features its own cutoff frequency and resonance control), 540 Dual Envelope Generator + LFO each section of which can be triggered by both external and internal source as well as manually with the help of a jack per envelope, 530 Dual VCA and 572 Phase Shifter + Delay + LFO (5-level phaser with resonance panel control, analog audio delay with delay time and resonance individual control).

Malekko will bring its products to Knobcon music festival 9-11 September 2016. You can also see the brand at Machines in Music 8-9 October 2016.